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Paolo Robino (Paolo Robino)

CHRIS BAYLIS:

I was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital Middlesex at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve 1950. I lived in Palmer's Green in London, where the house my parents owned is now probably worth a small fortune but then was just an old, large house. The opportunity to move out of the smoke into the fresh air of a New Town with a new, albeit rented, 4-bedroom house, came about and so we took the road East and arrived in muddy Basildon. I say muddy because my earliest recollections (I was almost four when we moved) are of the muddy fields front and back of the house we moved in to.The London house is now probably worth around £2m at a guess. (I was nearly rich once !)

I went to school - though many people believe this to be a myth - and then on to a Grammar & Technical Education before joining the Merchant Navy and seeing the world - well quite a lot of it. I studied catering and passed City & Guilds with credits but then just when I was set to become the first Jamie Oliver (well .. sort of ... ) I decided that I enjoyed having my evenings and weekends with friends more than I enjoyed working every Saturday and Sunday and so I gave up cooking. I can still make a mean Beans on Toast though (the secret is in the Marmite and the Cheese). Life continued with some ups and a few downs until I met and married the lovely Frances (now the Lady Frances of Loch Borralan according to the Title and Land I bought her as a gift a couple of years ago) and we settled down to have 2.4 kids and a dog.

Thirty-four years later we have three adult children (not sure where the odd 0.6 came from), two who live in Basildon still and one who moved to Brunei, (recently returned) 11 grand-children, 2 dogs, 7 cats, 2 chinchillas, 2 Degu's, 7 ducks and an assortment of fish. I am a keen games player, online and PC/Xbox360/Wii games and boardgames mainly, enjoy designing card and board games, going to the local theatre and listening to music (my taste in music is quite wide and varied, I like what I like no matter if it's a heavy metal band or a solo vocalist). I watch NFL and Soccer from my armchair (two car accidents make me less mobile than I would like) and, for my sins, I support the Miami Dolphins and Tottenham Hotspur. So that's me.....